Clinton’s lead bigger with live polls

FiveThirtyEight generally takes an inclusive attitude towards polls. Our forecast models include polls from pollsters who use traditional methods, i.e., live interviewers. And we include surveys conducted with less tested techniques, such as interactive voice response (or “robopolls”) and online panels. We don’t treat all polls equally — our models account for the methodological quality and past accuracy of each pollster — but we’ll take all the data we can get.

This split, however, between live-interview polls and everything else, is something we keep our eye on. When we launched our general election forecasts in late June, there wasn’t a big difference in the results we were getting from polls using traditional methodologies and polls using newer techniques. Now, it’s pretty clear that Hillary Clinton’s lead over Donald Trump is wider in live-telephone surveys than it is in nonlive surveys.

We don’t know exactly why live-interview polls are getting different results than other types of surveys; there are a lot of potential causes and it’s something we’ll be digging into.

It may be the US version of Shy Tories. People are more willing to say they will back Trump to a machine than to a live person.

As of Tuesday morning, Clinton led Trump by 6 percentage points and had a 79 percent chance of winning, according to our polls-only forecast. But running our polls-only model using only live-interview surveys, Clinton leads Trump by 7 points and has an 86 percent chance of winning. Running it with only nonlive-interview polls, Clinton leads Trump by 5 points and has a 71 percent chance of winning.

So around a 2% difference. They all have Trump well behind but by 5% instead of 7% non-live vs live.

As the cases of Utah and Kansas suggest, I’d put more faith in the live-interview polls than in other types of surveys, all else being equal. Indeed, our forecast models do just that.

I tend to prefer live-interview polls also as the more reliable. But worth noting in the Brexit vote, the online panel polls were more accurate than the phone polls.

Bob R

Things seem to be going Trump’s way. The FBI email release on the Friday before Labor Day Weekend, Trump meeting the Mexican President, successful Detroit visit, while Hillary is meeting with her mega-rich donors.

I think Hillary needs a big debate performance to get the momentum back.

dave_c_

tom hunter

It’s funny that Trump has achieved for the debates what most politicians strive for: lower the bar of expectations as far down as possible.

And he did it without trying. 🙂

So he has a real opportunity to score big-time – IF he keeps calm and acts Presidential. These things are not debates in the traditional sense so all these expectations that the one is going to “smash” or “destroy” the other, is just activist crap. It doesn’t work like that. They’re job interviews and basically viewers walk away with only one “fact” or impression or story. If you think back to past Presidential debates, people really can only recall one thing from them, whether it’s a soundbite or an impression of how the contestants acted.

Trump needs to carry into those debates the same thing he’s been doing in the past week or two: act fucking Presidential. No more stupid Tweet wars with whoever has got under his skin on any given day. I guess a month of beatings produced a change after all. We will see. If I was the Clinton campaign I’d be using as many activists as possible to dig away at Trump and get a reaction, while she keeps out of the public eye.

She’s got that last down pat, having also finally learned a lesson: that the more people see of her the less they think of her.

Manolo

Icarus

This says as much about her supporters as it does the crocked old hag herself.

Feel free to add to the list. There are plenty more to add.

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The 7 Wildest Lies From Hillary Clinton

Dead Broke – In an interview, Clinton stated that she “came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt.” Something even the left-leaning Politifact found to be false.

Sniper Fire – During the 2008 campaign, Clinton said she came under sniper fire in Bosnia during the ’90s. She went so far as to claim her group ran “with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” Video of her actual arrival surfaced showing a very calm scene instead, and the Democrat would quickly say she simply misspoke.

Immigrant Grandparents – When discussing immigrant stories, Clinton asserted that “all my grandparents… came over here.” It was another story Politifact said was false, as only one of her grandparents was an immigrant.

Sir Edmund Hillary – Seems Clinton can’t even bring herself to tell the truth about her own name. She claimed to be named after Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first men to climb Mt. Everest. One small problem though, the explorer didn’t climb Everest until Clinton was 6 years old.

The Few, The Proud, The Marines – Very recently, Clinton claimed to have been turned down by the Marines when she applied in 1975. Washington Post fact-checkers quickly realized the absurdity that a rising legal star at the time, and soon to be wife of Bill Clinton, would drop everything and ship off with the Marines. They gave her a couple of Pinocchios for her tall tale.

Secret E-Mails – Former Secretary of State Clinton claimed her infamous private e-mail server was set up in “accordance with the rules and the regulations in effect.” A federal judge disagreed, saying Clinton “violated government policy” when she used a private server to store official State Department messages.

Benghazi – Clearly the most reprehensible lie of them all – Clinton failed to tell the truth about a terrorist attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi. She claimed for weeks, standing over the flag-draped coffins of murdered Americans, that an insensitive YouTube video had incited the violence that occurred that night. Why? Because a terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11 – which it was – would have destroyed President Obama’s re-election chances. But hey, at the end of the day it’s worth it to Clinton to tell a politically expedient lie, so long as her party can stay in power.